The ultimate measure of a college or university may be in the extent to which graduates rise to the top of their respective industries.
getty
There’s a college ranking for just about everything these days, from “Best College Food” to the top institutions driving “Social Mobility.” Some rankings matter more than others – especially depending on what you see as the purpose of college (for foodies, “Best College Food” likely matters a great deal). Current rankings are based on criteria such as inputs, perception of quality, and graduate outcomes, but most fall short of providing a meaningful measure of the value of a degree that ties back to the core reason people pursue higher education in the first place – to get a better job.
Input-based rankings, such as the incoming GPAs and SAT scores of enrolled students, say less about the value provided by the institution than they do about the superior starting position of students recruited there. Other rankings account for factors that serve as proxies for a high-quality student experience, such as endowment size or student-to-faculty ratios, but do not reflect actual student outcomes.
And even outcome-based metrics have their shortcomings. Rankings based on graduation rates and the average earnings of graduates can be gamed or skewed. Making it easier for students to complete degrees is certainly one way to increase graduation rates. And when accounting for statistically underpaid careers such as education, social work, or ministry –earnings of even the top graduates in these important and purpose-driven fields will fall short of their peers in engineering or finance.
Rankings based on ‘value-add’ get closer to the primary reason for pursuing a degree. A high ranking is achieved by improving the socioeconomic status of students, comparing their socioeconomic status before and after attending. For example, a college or university that consistently enrolls Pell eligible students (from the bottom income quartile) who end up in the top quartile after graduation would score high on a value-add ranking.
It still feels like something’s missing, though. None of these ranking systems or outcome metrics directly connect back to the primary reason why students pursue higher education: ‘to get a good or better job.’ To measure the value-add of a college or university we should be asking: to what extent do graduates obtain “good jobs” and how would you measure that?
Objectively measuring job quality is easier said than done: it is fundamentally a subjective measure. When I was the Executive Director of Education & Workforce Development at Gallup, I led the Gallup-Purdue Index – the largest representative study of college graduates in U.S. history. One of its focal measures was the degree to which graduates were engaged in their work. As a soft measure, “engagement” is a highly valid proxy for job quality, but it still lacks objectivity in many people’s minds.
In devising an objective measure of career outcomes in order to rank university quality, I propose narrowing the focus: to what extent do graduates rise to the top of their respective industries.
To what extent do graduates rise to the top of their respective industries?
In every field there are a handful of truly dominant organizations. They are hard to miss. In accounting, there’s the Big Four – Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG. In tech, it’s Apple, Microsoft, Google and NVIDIA. In every field – retail, healthcare, financial services, and so on – there are always a few clearly identifiable organizations at the very top. And this top tier of organizations share something in common: as employers, they can attract and hire the best talent in the world. What if we were to measure a college or university by how many of their graduates end up working in the top firms of their respective fields?
The good news about this kind of metric is it is hiding in plain sight, in publicly available LinkedIn data. A quick review of a company’s “People” tab can reveal the top universities where their employees studied. For example, the University of California – Berkeley is the #1 producer of employees at Google with 4,402 employees. Stanford University ranks #2. Unsurprising but very clear winners. For Apple, the top ranked schools are Stanford University, UC-Berkeley, and San Jose State University. And at NVIDIA: Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is #1 followed by UC-Berkeley and Stanford.
Some might be surprised to see a San Jose State and Technion-Israel at the top of the list – simply because they are lesser-known through traditional rankings. Clearly, though, they are powerhouses in producing top talent for the top employers. And more examples like this abound – especially when we start to consider the global talent pool and universities across the world. The #5 producer of employees at Google is a university that most in the U.S. have never heard of: Birla Institute of Technology and Science. Birla, impressively, also ranks #3 at Microsoft and #5 at JP Morgan Chase.
When it comes to landing a job at the top finance firms – Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase or Morgan Stanley – you’ve got better odds going to University of Mumbai (#1 at JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley) or The Institute of Chartered Accountants, India (#2 at JP Morgan, #2 at Morgan Stanley and #3 at Goldman Sachs) than going to the London School of Economics, NYU, Columbia, Wharton or Harvard (though such venerable institutions are certainly among the top).
In looking for an objective outcomes-based ranking system that relates directly to the number one reason to pursue higher education, we can measure the number of graduates employed by the top employers in their field or industry. Thinking about student outcomes in this way could help repair the perceived disconnect between higher education and industry. It’s a viable candidate for ‘ultimate’ measure of a college or university.
